The Shadow of the Plane

What the title says, really. The clouds on which the shadow was cast obviously being not all that far away!

The halo around the plane is actually very much the same thing as a rainbow – just a different number of internal reflections in the water droplets, albeit tiny ones of which the cloud is composed rather than raindrops. You don’t generally see this at ground level because it’s directly opposite the sun, and there’s not enough mist between you and the ground in that direction, but you can sometimes see one around your shadow on mist below you when you’re on a mountain top. The proper term for this halo is a glory.

I think the little diagonal line of shadow below the fuselage, behind the wings, is the shadow of the exhaust from the jets – angled downwards by the downdraft from the wings. Although the exhaust is transparent, it casts a shadow because the light passing through it is bent (refracted) away from its original direction.

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